If it had not been for the blue smoke curling up in thin wreaths from a stick chimney which rose up in the rear, he would hardly have discovered the dwelling at first sight--a little one-story log-house, so completely covered with clambering vines that it looked like a green mound. Tartarian honeysuckles waved at the very summit of the chimney, and wild-roses curtained every window. Taking upon herself the part of hostess, Alice led the way to the house. Philip was again agreeably surprised, as he entered it. He had read of squatter life, and considered himself "posted" as to what to expect--corn-bread and bacon, an absence of forks and table-cloths, musquitoes, the river for a wash-basin, sand for soap, the sun for a towel, and the privilege of sharing the common bed. But upon entering the cabin, he found himself in a large room, with two smaller apartments partitioned from the side; the cooking seemed to be done in a shanty in the rear. The table was set in the center of the room, with a neat cloth, and a great glass plate, heaped with blackberries, stood upon it, and was surrounded by a wreath of wild-flowers woven by the same dimpled hands which had managed the oars so deftly. "'Clar to gracious, masser, you tuk us unbeknown." The new speaker was an old negro woman, portly and beaming, who appeared at the back door, crowned with a yellow turban, and bearing in her left hand that scepter of her realm, the rolling-pin. "But not unprepared, hey, Pallas?" "Wall, I dunno, masser. I didn't spec' the pickaninny 'ud eat more 'n _one_ roas' chicken. But thar's two in de oven; for, to tell de trute, masser, I had a sense dat you war a comin'; and I know'd if you wasn't, me and my ole man wouldn't be afraid of two fowls." "But I've brought home company, Pallas." "Hev you now, masser? I'se mighty glad to hear it. I'd as soon wait on masser's frien's as to sing de Land of Canaan. Yer welcome," she added, dropping a courtesy to the guest with as much importance as if she were mistress of the house--as, in fact, she had been, in most matters, for many long years. He made her a deep and gracious bow, accompanied by a smile which took her old heart by storm. Retreating to the kitchen outside, where Saturn, her husband, had been pressed into service, and sat with an apron over his knees pareing potatoes, buoyed up by the promise of roast chicken from his wife, she told him as she rolled and cut out her biscuits: "The finest gentleum she had sot eyes on sence she left ole Virginny. His smile was enough to melt buttah--jus' de smile what a sweet-mannered young gentleum ought to have. She was mighty glad," she added, in a mysterious whisper, "dat ar' pickaninny was no older." "Wha' for?" queried Saturn, pausing, with a potato on the end of his knife, and a look of hopeless darkness on his face, barring the expanding whites of his eyes.